The French monarchy has become infamous to posterity for stories of dangerous liaisons. Louis XIV and his ladies, Louis XV and his Parc aux Cerfs, the Fersen legend, are the standard fare served to the public for generations. Not only does scandal sell books and movies but it reinforces the modern conviction that all royals were decadent and corrupt. The Bourbon dynasty, nevertheless, was remarkable not only for the amorous escapades of some of the kings, but for souls of fortitude and religious devotion, especially among the ladies. Queens Marie-Thérèse d'Espagne and Marie Lesczynska endured their husbands' infidelities with patience and forgiveness, while giving an example of virtue and devoted motherhood to the kingdom. The daughters of Louis XV, in spite of their eccentricities, were known to be pious souls, charitable towards the poor and the religious houses.

The sister of Louis XVI, however, outshines them all. In Madame Elisabeth was blended the piety of Saint Clothilde with the raw courage of Eleanor d'Acquitaine. She possessed the benevolence and common touch which distinguished the descendants of Henri IV. As her brother was hailed “Son of Saint Louis” at the moment of his death, so Madame Elisabeth could be called the “Daughter of Saint Louis” for she exemplified in her person everything that was fine, noble and magnificent about the House of France.

It is sad that in so many novels and films, Elisabeth is either erased or minimized, when her presence was a source of comfort to the king and the queen in their ordeals, even if she disagreed with them. She withstood the mob at her brother’s side and encouraged the rest of the family in the darkness of imprisonment. She became a second mother to her niece Madame Royale, and comforted the condemned on the way to the scaffold.

Madame Elisabeth (1764- 1794) became an orphan at the age of three and was raised by her governesses Madame de Marsan and Madame de Mackau. She was a stubborn child but eventually conquered her willfulness so that gentleness and kindness became her most outstanding character traits.

Mme. de Marsan asked the king to appoint Mme. de Mackau, who was living in retirement in Alsace, as sub-governess. This choice proved to have all the elements required to work a happy change in the nature of a self-willed and haughty child. Mme. de Mackau possessed a firmness to which resistance yielded, and an affectionate kindness which enticed attachment. Armed with almost maternal power, she brought up the Children of France as she would have trained her own children; overlooking no fault; knowing, if need were, how to make herself feared; all the while leading them to like virtue. To a superior mind she added a dignity of tone and manners which inspired respect. When her pupil gave way to the fits of haughty temper to which she was subject, Mme. de Mackau showed on her countenance a displeased gravity, as if to remind her that princes, like other persons, could not be liked except for their virtues and good qualities. (see Katherine Wormeley’s The Ruin of a Princess

Elisabeth always remained strong-willed when it came to adhering to her principles, however. Many princes sought her hand in marriage, including Marie-Antoinette’s brother Emperor Joseph II, but Elisabeth wanted to become a nun. She longed to join her Aunt Louise at the Carmelite monastery at Saint Denis, where she often visited and served the nuns at table. Louis XVI would not give his permission for her to enter, begging her to stay. “We will have need of you here,” he said.

So Elisabeth took on the challenge of living the single, consecrated life in the world, without the support of a community, and living it amid the splendors of Versailles. As Elisabeth grew older she more frequently joined Marie-Antoinette at Petit Trianon, and she remained close to her brother, Louis XVI. She was devoted to her brother Artois, the rascal of the family, and tried to encourage him to reform his life, while comforting his forlorn and forsaken wife, Marie-Thérèse de Savoie. For her twenty-fifth birthday, Elisabeth was given a farm called Montreuil by the king and the queen, where she started a dairy to provide milk for poor children. While she organized her ladies in devotions and charitable works, Elisabeth also enjoyed music, embroidery, clothes and especially shoes. She loved to dance and was the last to leave any ball.

In the days of the Revolution, Madame Elisabeth disagreed with the conciliatory policies of her brother Louis XVI and the political maneuverings of Marie-Antoinette. She saw the Revolution as pure evil, as an attack upon the Church and Christendom and thought that it should be stopped with fire and sword if necessary. There were many heated arguments at the Tuileries and as author Simone Bertiere points out in L’Insoumise, Marie-Antoinette could hardly stand her sister-in-law at times. However, misfortune bonded the two women together as if they had been blood sisters.

Elisabeth was deeply aware of the danger to her own life but refused to leave her brother’s family. She stood at his side on June 20, 1792 when the mob stormed the Tuileries and hoped that the people would mistake her for the queen so that her sister-in-law would be spared. “Were it not better that they shed my blood than that of my sister?” she said. When Louis XVI was killed and the little Dauphin taken away and brutalized, Elisabeth comforted Marie-Antoinette and young Madame Royale, keeping them from despair. Nesta Webster reports in Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette during the Revolution that when a friend wondered if Madame Elisabeth could escape on her own, it was said, “Madame Elisabeth is inseparable from the queen; she would not leave her for the most splendid crown in the universe.” After the queen’s death in October 1793, the aunt and the niece remained in the Temple prison, enduring humiliations and taunts of the jailers. Elisabeth trained Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte how to survive in confinement, knowing that soon she would be alone.

In May, 1794, Elisabeth was removed to the Conciergerie. According to Deborah Cadbury in The Lost King of France, Elisabeth, knowing she was to die, offered to God the sacrifice of her life. At her trial she was condemned for plotting against the Revolution. While awaiting death, eyewitnesses reported how she inspired the other prisoners: “She seemed to regard them all as friends about to accompany her to heaven….the tranquility of her mind subdued their anguish.” (Cadbury, p. 138) On May 10, 1793 she recited the De Profundis on the way to the guillotine. The princess was the last of a group of twenty-five people to be executed; they each knelt before her, asking her blessing. (Some say she fainted in the process; the sound of so many decapitations was too much.) When it was Elisabeth’s turn, the executioner pulled her bodice down very low off her shoulders, and she begged for modesty’s sake to be covered. There were no cheers when Elisabeth’s head was thrown into a basket, the crowd was silent, and some reported the scent of roses filling the square, a miracle from the middle ages to disturb the dawn of modernity. Many regarded her as a saint, including Pope Pius VII, and perhaps someday her cause will be introduced.

Last edited by Elena on Thu Nov 10, 2011 6:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

Here is a review of a biography of Madame Elisabeth by a distant relative of hers, Princess Henriette of Belgium, Duchesse de Vendôme. Henriette worked for the cause of beatification of Madame Elisabeth.

In writing her account, Henriette draws upon the surviving letters of Madame Élisabeth, earlier biographies of the princess, the memoirs of her niece, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte of France, and the accounts of intimates of the royal family. Henriette supplements these sources with oral family tradition, based upon her ties of kinship with the reigning houses of France, Austria and Saxony. The result is a very powerful portrayal of the spiritual journey of a beautiful, intelligent and ardent royal lady.

By nature stubborn and imperious, Élisabeth became, through faith, prayer and good works, a gentle, humble young woman of immense charity. The same strong will and high spirit that made her a difficult child rendered possible her constant striving for perfection. Denied permission, despite her attraction to the religious life, to become a Carmelite nun like her Aunt Louise, she took on the challenge of living the virginal, consecrated life in the world. Amidst the splendors and temptations of Versailles, no less, she managed to be a model of piety, purity and charity to the poor. Throughout court intrigues and betrayals, even within the royal family, she remained a loyal and loving sister of the King and Queen. Ultimately, she would attain a sublime degree of spiritual heroism amidst the horrors of the Revolution, inconceivable tragedy, cruelty and humiliation, and, finally, a brutal, bloody and untimely death.

There is going to be an exhibit on Madame Elisabeth in 2013 at Versailles:http://m.en.chateauversailles.fr/history-/court-people/epoque-louis-xvi/madame-elisabeth-en

Princess of royal blood (1764-1794)

Princess Elisabeth de France was the last-born sibling of Louis XVI. A figure remarkable for her exuberance and piety, throughout her life she showed a strong attachment to her brother and sister-in-law, whom she followed to their final place of incarceration.

Born in the palace of Versailles in 1764, Elisabeth de France, called Madame Elisabeth, was the youngest sister of Louis XVI. Orphaned at the age of 3, she received an excellent education during which she was noted for her talents in mathematics and the sciences. Her contemporaries said she was a skilled rider, gifted for drawing and embroidery but a mediocre singer. From her childhood, she revealed an ambiguous personality, her great devotion combining with her dissipated and original character – she signed some of her letters “Elisabeth la Folle” (Mad Elisabeth). At an early age she showed great attachment to Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, with whom she lived all her life, refusing to marry to be able to remain with them.

In 1783, when Madame Elisabeth was 19, Louis XVI gave her a plot of land and a house in the village of Montreuil, which can still be seen today in the Montreuil district of Versailles and is known as the “Domaine de Madame Elisabeth” (her estate). Although she was not allowed to sleep here before coming of age (25), she rode there every day from the palace of Versailles. The life she lived there, simpler than at the court, was dominated by the leisure activities that she had adopted in her childhood, and by the pious practices and works of charity that earned her the nickname “Bonne dame de Montreuil” (good lady of Montreuil).

When the French Revolution broke out, Madame Elisabeth adopted a very firm stand against the supporters of a constitutional monarchy and was opposed to any search for a compromise. Her attachment to Louis XVI led her to refuse the exile chosen by her aunts and other brothers. So she followed Marie-Antoinette to Varennes, to the Temple prison, and then to the scaffold on which she died in 1794 before being buried in a common grave.

Her attachment to her brother and sister-in-law, her intransigent opposition to the Revolution’s aspirations, her piety, her charitable work and the way she met her death led to the formation of a cult built around her personality in the first half of the 19th century. This cult was fostered within the royalist movement which developed in favour of a restoration of the monarchy and militated for the beatification of Madame Elisabeth.

From a miniature. http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2011/10/miniature-of-madame-elisabeth.html

On Madame Elisabeth's estate at Montreuil: http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2009/06/montreuil.htmlAnd her governess: http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2009/08/madame-de-guemenee.html

Montreuil was given to Madame Elisabeth of France in 1781 by Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Since life at the royal palace afforded little or no privacy, the King and the Queen decided to give the seventeen year old princess a place to call her own. According to Imbert de Saint-Amand's Marie-Antoinette and the End of the Old Regime:

In 1781, Louis XVI., who dearly loved his sister, made her a fitting present. At No. 41 of the Avenue de Paris, at Versailles, there is a little street running north and south, called the rue du Bon Conseil. At No. 2 in this street is the entrance into a building which extends for some distance along the Avenue de Paris. This house was built about 1776, for the governess of the royal children, the Princess of Rohan-Gueménée. A lovely garden was laid out there; from the top of a hillock, eight or ten metres high, which was ascended by a spiral staircase concealed in the shrubbery, there was a distant view of Paris, lying like a giant on the horizon. This pretty place was situated in what was then a suburb of Versailles, and was called Montreuil. In 1781, the Prince of Gueménée became bankrupt, and the Princess, in order to satisfy as far as possible, her husband's creditors, sold her diamonds, her furniture and estates, including the house and park of Montreuil. Madame Elisabeth had often walked there, and she greatly admired its shade and its flowers.

In spite of her love of solitude, she was the only princess of the royal family who had no country- house. One day in 1781, Marie Antoinette and Madame Elisabeth were driving along the Avenue de Paris. " If you like," said the Queen to her young sister-in-law, we will stop at that house in Montreuil, where you used to like to go when you were a little girl." " I shall be delighted," answered Madame Elisabeth; "for I have spent many happy hours there." The Queen and the Princess got out of their carriage, and just as they were crossing the threshold, Marie Antoinette said, " Sister, you are now in your own house. This is to be your Trianon. The King has the pleasure of offering this present to you, and has given me the happiness of informing you."

Madame Elisabeth was then but seventeen years old. The King decided that she should not sleep at Montreuil until she was twenty-five.

"But as soon as she came into the possession of her dear little estate, she spent only the evenings and the nights at Versailles. In the morning she would go to mass in the chapel of the palace, and then she would at once get into a carriage with one of her ladies to drive to Montreuil. Sometimes she would even walk there. The life she led there was monotonous and like that of the happiest family in a castle a hundred leagues from Paris. The hours for work, for exercise, for reading, in solitude or in company, were carefully appointed. The dinner hour brought the Princess and her ladies together at the same table," M. de Beauchesne tells us in his life of Madame Elisabeth.

In the same book he adds: "Later, before returning to court, they would all kneel down in the drawing-room, and in conformity to the habit surviving in some families, would have evening prayers together. Then they would return to the busy palace, at once so near and so remote, and enter their official home with the memory of a happy day filled with work, lightened by friendship, and consecrated by prayer."

The first thing that Madame Elisabeth did with her new property was to give to Madame de Mackau a little house adjacent, upon the estate. She thought that the best way of inaugurating her taking possession was by sharing it with her former instructress. The Baroness of Mackau, who was not rich, accepted gratefully the gift of the Princess, and established herself at Montreuil with her daughter, Madame de Bombelles, whom Madame Elisabeth treated like an old friend.

Like Petit Trianon, Montreuil had a grotto, an orangerie, and a dairy. Madame Elisabeth donated the milk to poor children. One of her maids was a Swiss girl who had left the man she loved behind in Switzerland. When Marie-Antoinette heard of the girl's plight, she sent for the fiancé, called Jacques Bosson, and paid for the wedding. The incident inspired a popular song, Pauvre Jacques.

(Poor Jack, while I was near to thee, Tho’ poor, my bliss was unalloyed; But now thou dwell’st so far from me, The world appears a lonesome void.)

Madame Elisabeth was at Montreuil on October 5, 1789 when word came that the mob was marching on Versailles. Although she had many opportunities to leave France, she chose to be imprisoned with Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and their children. She shared all of their humiliations and hardships in the Temple prison, without regret. The following incident is recorded from December 1792:

On 7th December a deputation from the Commune brought an order that the royal family should be deprived of "knives, razors, scissors, penknives, and all other cutting instruments." The King gave up a knife, and took from a morocco case a pair of scissors and a penknife; and the officials then searched the room, taking away the little toilet implements of gold and silver, and afterwards removing the Princesses' working materials. Returning to the King's room, they insisted upon seeing what remained in his pocket-case. "Are these toys which I have in my hand also cutting instruments?" asked the King, showing them a cork-screw, a turn-screw,and a steel for lighting. These also were taken from him. Shortly afterwards Madame Elisabeth was mending the King's coat, and, having no scissors, was compelled to break the thread with her teeth.

"What a contrast!" he exclaimed, looking at her tenderly. "You wanted nothing in your pretty house at Montreuil."

"Ah, brother," she answered, "how can I have any regret when I partake your misfortunes?"

A prayer of Madame Elisabeth to the Sacred Heart: http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2008/08/letter-from-madame-elisabeth.html

Adorable heart of Jesus, sanctuary of the love that led God to make himself man, to sacrifice his life for our salvation, and to make of his body the food of our souls: in gratitude for that infinite charity I give you my heart, and with it all that I possess in this world, all that I am, all that I shall do, all that I shall suffer. But, my God, may this heart, I implore you, be no longer unworthy of you; make it like unto yourself; surround it with your thorns and close its entrance to all ill-regulated affections; set there your cross, make it feel its worth, make it willing to love it. Kindle it with your divine flame. May it burn for your glory; may it be all yours, when you have done what you will with it. You are its consolation in its troubles, the remedy of its ills, its strength and refuge in temptation, its hope during life, its haven in death. I ask you, O heart so loving, the same favour for my companions. So be it.

O divine heart of Jesus! I love you, I adore you, I invoke you, with my companions, for all the days of my life, but especially for the hour of my death.

On her imprisonment and death:http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2007/06/thetwo-princesses-in-temple.htmlIn her Memoirs, translated by John Wilson Croker, Madame Royale describes the life in the Temple prison in 1794 with her aunt Madame Elisabeth. Her little brother was being tormented in the room below and her parents had been killed. Then Madame Elisabeth was taken away and Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte was alone.

My aunt kept Lent strictly. She never breakfasted, but dined on a cup of milk-coffee (it was her breakfast, which she saved); and, for supper, she ate only dry bread. She, however, desired me to eat what was brought me, because my age did not require that I should fast; but, as for herself, nothing could be more exemplary than her way of life. Though they had done all they could to deprive her of the means of obeying the dictates of her conscience in these particulars, she had not, on that account, neglected any of the duties of religion.

In the beginning of spring we were refused candles, and we were obliged to go to bed as soon as it grew dark.

Until the 9th of May nothing extraordinary happened. On that day, at the moment we were going to bed, the outside bolts of the doors were drawn, and a knocking was heard. My aunt begged of them to wait till she had put on her gown; but you answered that they could not wait, and knocked so violently, that they were near bursting open the door. When she was dressed, she opened the door, and they immediately said to her, "Citizen, come down." — "And my niece?" — "We shall take care of her afterwards." She embraced me; and, in order to calm my agitation, promised to return. "No, citizen," said they, "you shall not return:— take your bonnet, and come along." They overwhelmed her with the grossest abuse. She bore it all patiently, and embraced me again, exhorting me to have confidence in Heaven, to follow the principles of religion in which I had been educated, and never to forget the last commands of my father and mother. She then left me.

Down stairs they detained her a considerable time in searching her (though they found nothing), and in writing an account of their proceedings. At length, after a thousand insults, she was put into a hackney-coach, with the crier of the revolutionary court, and taken to the Conciergerie, where she passed the night. The next morning they asked her these questions.—

"What is your name?"

"Elizabeth, of France."

"Where were you on the 10th of August?"

"In the palace of the Thuilleries, with my brother."

"What have you done with your jewels?"

" I know nothing about them; besides, these questions are wholly useless. You are determined on my death. I have offered to Heaven the sacrifice of my life; and I am ready to die — happy at the prospect of rejoining in a better world those whom I loved upon earth."

They condemned her to death.81 She asked to be placed in the same room with the other persons who were to die with her. She exhorted them, with a presence of mind, an elevation of soul, and religious enthusiasm, which fortified all their minds. In the cart she preserved the same firmness, and encouraged and supported the women who accompanied her. At the scaffold they had the barbarity to reserve her for the last. All the women, in leaving the cart, begged to embrace her.82 She kissed them, and, with her usual benignity, said some words of comfort to each. Her strength never abandoned her, and she died with all the resignation of the purest piety. Her soul was separated from her body, and ascended to receive its reward from the merciful Being, whose worthy servant she had been.

I've always been fond of Madame Elisabeth, although I am woefully ignorant when it comes to the finer details of her biography... Or even the broader details, since I've yet to actually study her beyond her position as a peripheral character in the lives of other historical figures.

Her letters are really quite interesting. Vive la Reine has a quote from a letter to Madame de Bombelles as well as a picture of Madame Elisabeth at the dairy she ran for poor children.

http://vivelareine.tumblr.com/post/42463244981

Madame Elisabeth to the Marquise de Bombelles, on her home of Montreuil after the royal family’s removal to Paris:

I have not made it a point of courage to refrain from speaking to you of Montreuil. You judge me, my heart, too favourably. Apparently I was not thinking of it when I wrote to you. I often have news of it. Jacques comes daily to bring my cream. Fleury, Coupry, Marie, and Mme. du Coudray come to see me from time to time. They all seem to love me still; and M. Huret–I forgot him–is not very bad.Now, about the house. The salon was being furnished when I left it; it promised to be very pleasant.

Jacques is in his new lodging. Mme. Jacques is pregnant; so are all my cows; a calf has just been born. The hens I will not say much about, because I have rather neglected to inquire for them. I don’t know if you saw my little cabinet after it was finished. It is very pretty. My library is almost finished. As for the chapel, Corille is working there all alone; you can imagine how fast it goes on! It is out of charity to him that I let him continue to put on a little plaster; as he is quite alone it cannot be called an expense.

I am grieved not to go there as you can easily believe; but horses are to me a still greater privation. However, I think as little as I can about it; though I feel that as my blood grows calmer, that particular privation makes itself more and more felt; but I shall have all the more pleasure when I can satisfy that taste.

Anna Amber posted a translation of one of Madame Elisabeth's letters the other day:

Madame Elisabeth to the Marquise de Raigecourt, August 8th, 1792

… Rumors says the Assembly does not want the King’s deposition, but that it will be forced to it. It is also rumored that the King will leave here somewhere forcibly… they say also that a strong movement will take place in Paris to bring this about. Do you think this is true? As for me, I do not believe it. I think there will be a great hubbub resulting in nothing. There you have my profession of faith. Furthermore, things are as calm as possible today. Yesterday was the same, and I think that today will follow in its footsteps. Adieu. I tell you nothing, because there are too many things I want to tell you… I embrace you and love you with all my heart.

(Which Dauphin, Charles or Joseph, I am not sure as it doesn’t specify. I would lean towards Joseph though, because the artist apparently joined the revolutionary cause in 1789, and Charles would only have been four years old then. I doubt he’d be painting such a lovely portrait of two members of the Royal Family after he’d started supporting the revolutionaries)